


Shadows

by LookingForDroids



Category: V for Vendetta (Comic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Gen, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 03:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11501046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: You can't kill an idea.





	Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Originally anonymous, but I'm fond enough of this one to post it.

_Is he even still alive behind that mask?_

Evey quashes that thought as quickly as it appears. She isn't sure it truly matters whether he's a man in mask and cloak or the ghost of an idea – not when she's seen him move like smoke, dancing invincible past bullets and blades. Not when she never knows whether it will be the archivist's face he wears, or the courteous stranger dancing with her in the Shadow Gallery, or the red flash of a knife across a throat. She knows he's kind to some of those he kills. Not all of them.

*

When he shows her the roses, she cannot help but want to touch. It's been a long time since she's seen anything so beautiful and so alive, and she cannot help but be careless. She jerks her hand back, hissing at the scrape of thorn across skin and the bead of red that blooms there. 

She thinks he might be startled, though it is obvious only as stillness. He folds her fingers over the scratch, carefully, tenderly. It is not difficult to recognize desire.

"Is one of them for me?"

"They are all for you," he says. "Tend them well."

*

 _Give me a Viking funeral_ , he'd told her. Let me burn. She lays him on his bier of lilies and gelignite, and hopes as she rises that he'll find his rest. 

She finds the cloaks and the masks all in their rows, the books and weapons, the whole of her inheritance. She finds the syringe, too, the gleaming needle tip and the bright red liquid inside. Still alive, even now, or something _like_ alive. Still capable of transformation. 

You can't kill an idea.

She holds it in her palm, light as a dream, heavy as history. She sets it aside.


End file.
